Michael J Hoover

By the time Le Hinton reads the following comments, it will be too late for him to retract his guest poet column for next week. He knows I’m just kidding, of course, because he has a great sense of humor. However, although he is driven and success-oriented, Hinton is a human being who prefers not to be in the limelight.

Instead, he opts to direct the spot onto some other person he deems more worthy. This redirection of attention is not out of any phobia he has, rather it is born of a genuine humility that is a part of his aura. And this leads to a greater and more perplexing part of his personality as a poet.

Hinton is a walking paradox. His is a quiet energy, a tacit dynamism. His strength is subtle. His demeanor is unassuming and yet his presence is commanding. He is at once soft spoken yet highly articulate, and when called upon to perform, his honeyed euphony is crisp, clear, measured, compelling.

To many in Lancaster, York, Harrisburg, Carlisle, Gettysburg, Frederick, Westminster and Hanover, Hinton is a poet’s poet. Rather than a superfluous repetition, the echo is truly an underscored attribution.

As artists struggling to keep the creative juices flowing, attending as many critiques and readings as possible, and continually compiling and editing work we hope will make it to publication one day, we each want to emulate just Hinton’s drive to accomplish all the aspects of our art.

But while we wish to accomplish these goals for ourselves, Hinton accomplishes these feats mainly for other poets while still creating, publishing, promoting, performing, and selling his own work. That is how he belongs to each of us whether we’re aware of this fact or not.

For, in his selfless style of providing exposure to rising poets while sustaining his own poetry’s integrity, he advances the cause and work of us all. And when asked why he chooses to devote countless hours to his poetical projects involving other poets, he defers, “my mother taught us that it is a moral imperative to help others.”

Hinton publishes a poetry journal called Fledgling Rag three times a year at his own expense and has so far published books by three local poets. He maintains he does so because “those poems and poets should be better known.”

It is also his mother who introduced him to poetry, reading the Bible and Langston Hughes to her children until they could read them on their own. But, he confesses he didn’t write any poetry until a humanities class assignment at sixteen. The positive reinforcement he received from classmates and his teacher provided the spark that still engenders in him what he calls his “personal default setting . . . being in my room reading and writing alone.”

Hinton says, “Poetry . . . can paint a picture, pretty or otherwise. It may instruct and inform. It may rally a person to a cause or express deep or shallow emotions. My intentions are to do all of these things, and more.”

Here is a piece from his own book Status Post Hope copyrighted 2006 by Iris G. Press. In this collection there are four poems with “hope” in their titles if you include this one whose formal translation is “Miss Hope” or more loosely, “The Young Woman Hope.”

One wonders whether Hinton personifies the volatile poetic wish that is the preoccupation of poets who haven’t as yet found an audience. Ironically, they are less inhibited because they are their own audiences. As a result, they are perpetually taking risks with their work, following their own hearts or even people they sense have a sort of raw energy that pushes envelopes or ventures into uncharted territory. By luck, they emerge on the other side alive, but with a framework to build narrative and metaphor, the stuff that poetry is made on.

Maybe Hinton sees himself as the speaker in this poem who not only realizes the practiced naivete needed to keep his own work fresh, but also recognizes that such hopeful survivors might need a leg up.

Senorita Esperanza

hope is a naive adolescent
who seldom listens
to her mother
she wears white in
winter no boots in
the snow
smokes filterless Camels
with the older girl from
the wrong side of the tracks
in the bathroom at school
just for the experience
then
comes to the big
city
disappears down dark
alleys with strange
men possessing even stranger
ideas and somehow she
avoids the slaughterhouse

i should be so naive
- Le Hinton

Hinton will be our second guest poet columnist next Sunday, February 24. We anxiously await his insight, wisdom, and boost to us all.

Change. A twist in the gut. A sinking in the heart. A fact of life. An affront to tradition. Something welcomed or repelled. Something to fight for or against. Most recognize that change is required for progress, though not all progress can be deemed good.

There is comfort in holding on, security in embracing what we know. In uncertain times, change warrants suspicion and mistrust. We sense our vulnerability. We don’t want to turn over any vital part of our past to the newcomer, to a stranger, or to any newfangledness for that matter. To take a risk seems unnecessary, foolhardy. But, risk taking engenders most innovation. And, innovation can bring about new reasons to celebrate.

American educator and writer Peter Drucker says, “People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.” So, what have we got to lose by trying? Risk taking demands that we trust, turn ourselves over, and remain open, even vulnerable, to the undiscovered, the untried, the new.

Sometimes change is subtle; more often, change clamors, shakes us awake, its surprise even shocking. Our sense of security is breached. Discomfort gives way to mistrust and our doubt gives in to fear. Fear excites our reflex of flight or fight. Initially, we go into denial or anger, part of the natural steps taken when we are threatened with the prospect of loss. In this case, it is loss of the familiar, what we have enjoyed, what we know.

Resisting change is not at all a bad reaction. It is part of a defense mechanism that has helped us survive as a species. But, might I suggest that there are two kinds of change.

The first kind, the one on the surface, usually causes some consternation. We instantly don’t like our granddaughter’s tattoo because we have always believed that tattoos are repugnant, unnatural detractors from God-given beauty. We see the change literally on her body and our mind goes where it usually goes when confronted by tattoos.

But, we are more upset by the less apparent effects of what we perceive as a more consequential change: thinking the ink will somehow ooze beneath the skin and affect the essence of the little girl we have always known to be sweet and good. We believe she will change by association. What we fail to realize is that she hasn’t changed where it counts most, on the inside. That the real change is no change at all, if we keep our minds and hearts open, our faith turned on high.

Accepting the honor to be Hanover’s third Poet Laureate, I have some challenges ahead. Indeed, my taking the reins of a column, beloved by the community because of its author’s keen ability to weave nuance, allusion, local color and the profound–all within 750 words wrapped around poems and discussions about poetry, and on a consistent basis–is nearly daunting. Dana Larkin Sauers’ invaluable contributions to our Sundays and subsequent conversations will be missed, if I may understate her absence from this post. But she and Anna Manahan Bowman, our first poet laureate, have made poetry a part of our community’s lives. They have promoted with high visibility the importance and relevance of the art of words, where truth and passion, experience and imagination coexist.

We have the commitment of our mayors and borough councils to say, Yes! Hanover acknowledges poetry’s prominent place in our community’s celebrations and events. Editor Marc Charisse recognizes his audience appreciates poetry’s stimulation. We enjoy learning, thinking, feeling, or appreciating. To grin or nod or uh-huh along with something we’ve read, seen or heard.

I intend to promote a conversation about poetry in the greater Hanover area. To continue the work and tradition of my predecessors in the community at large. To welcome input from poets and non-poets, by encouraging you, youngest and eldest, to send me your reactions, your poems, and your ideas. I want to have a solicited guest columnist monthly, recordings of readings and a posting of this column on the Evening Sun’s web page, podcasts from interviews, and even a CD available from an open mic featuring some of Hanover’s poets. You see, it’s going to appear as if change is afoot in Hanover, only the real change is that there will be no change where it counts most, inside the heart of what makes us community.

Following is both an excerpted conversation on poetry and the process of critique, initiated by my stated intent to keep the conversation about poetry going in our community. (MH)

Here is a poem written by me, Brian Kilkelly.

No Worries

If you don’t see it by now,

I worry quite a lot.

I worry about my future

And am frozen on the spot

I worry about the weather

And all it can entail.

I worry about the new day

And what actions may prevail.

Worry makes me cautious

Worry makes me wait.

But through it all I love you

And though my heart could break

I feel at peace within this place,

Here I have no ache.

For I hear you say, “No worries,”

And believe your every word

About you and me I worry now,

And that, my dear, is good.
- Brian Kilkelly

Hello, Brian,

Thanks for forwarding your poem. I’m offering some comments expecting you to respond, so we can keep a conversation going until your poem is satisfied.

First, in baring his character, the speaker of “No Worries” admits to a flaw, expounds upon it, broadens its coverage, then rationalizes its appropriateness. Great strategy!

Questions: Is the purpose of the poet simply to have the audience empathize with a worrier? Is the speaker’s use of a personal “you” perhaps too narrow in its scope?

I really like the lines: “Worry makes me cautious/ Worry makes me wait.” These are fresh and hint a path to follow. These lines are less “telling” and more “showing” by using personification, having the abstract “worry” be animated.

The poem brings a common experience before its audience. The challenge is to present a fresh way to leave the audience in tacit agreement or wondering or simply feeling something about your main idea.

I do stumble at “But through it all I love you.” Here, I feel disengaged. The “you” is definitely not me. Up to this point, I thought you might be talking to me as part of a larger audience.

As to form, why one stanza? Why is punctuation and rhyme scheme inconsistent? Though, some of your slant rhyme is artful.

Why inversion in “About you and me I worry now”? Have you forced this line to get a rhyme?

Okay, your poetical idea nags at me for more. How’s this food for thought? You’ve inspired me. Let’s both risk putting our works in progress out there:

No Worries

Knee deep in angst, I twist
in the mire of my future where
the weather is all worry and each
day sucks me down like quicksand.

Qualms make me cautious,
doubt makes me wait;
bad news makes my heart wince,
“I love you” becalms the torment.

Though misgivings are torture,
they guarantee our survival.
- Michael J Hoover, adapted from Brian Kilkelly

I’m not in the job of rewriting someone else’s poem. I’m suggesting that you see that my take is different. My version still has “telling” moments that need to be worked through, but the poem seems less hungry now. Let’s go on with the second course. By the way, as head chef, you must conjure up the new version of your entree. And, don’t worry, you’ll do great!

Mr. H

Hello,

I had not thought about a purpose in this piece other than the feeling of worry that I had, so I guess that is the purpose. Also, the “you” was written with a specific person in mind. I wonder if that is too personal?

I was not thinking about the line breaks having so much effect upon the piece, but now that it is brought up, I see the need for more breakage. And yes, some of the rhyme was forced.

On to your poem. I like the new spin on the idea. I also like the broadening of the topic . . . the idea of torment guaranteeing our survival . . . your use of weather in contrast to my use of weather. The weather in my poem is the actual weather in a physical sense, like rain and wind. Your weather IS worry. That threw me for a loop.

I guess it is now time to resubmit my poem for another round.

No Worries

If you don’t see it by now,
I worry quite a lot.
I worry about my future
and am frozen on the spot.

I worry about the weather
and all it can entail.
I worry about the new day
and what actions may prevail.

Worry makes me cautious
Worry makes me wait.
“I Love You” is all that need be said
to bring rest to my weary head.

For now I hear you say, “No worries,”
And believe your every word
About you and I, I worry now,
And that, my dear, is good.
- Brian Kilkelly

I feel this effort is stronger in the flow of the poem. Please tell me again what you think.

Thank You,

Brian Kilkelly

In celebration of the season of children, let’s elevate imitation’s place in our lives. Copycatting, aping, mimicking–all get a bad rap. But, similar to the popular soft drink, imitation is the real thing.

Falling in love with our children is magical. It begins when they first lock onto our eyes and exchange recognition. I am a human being just like you. I want to know about you. Teach me to learn how. I am depending on you.

Here, touch my mouth. Can you feel the hum of my heart on my lips? Listen to what I say. I will start with introductions. I am Da. Da. I am Ma. Ma.

We teach by imitation. We learn by imitation. We love by imitation. Call this the narcissism of parents. Call this encouraging the art of flattery at its earliest opportunity. But it is within the context of imitation that we can declare our independence to become original.

As one of the patriarchs of the English sonnet, Shakespeare is often imitated either by memorization or by parody. Either way renders appreciation to a master and to formalism in poetry.

Sonnet XVIII

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
- William Shakespeare

Hear the thrum of the speaker’s heart in his words of tribute. Yes, it is flattery. But, flattery only resides in the desert of the mouth. Exaggeration, whose impetus is the heart, melts in the heat of the mouth to reveal truth, the very motive of love. And, he knows it may get him nowhere. But relationship demands risk. Then, in the final couplet, where surprise usually lurks among the reeds of cleverness or poignancy, the quantum leap: the promise of immortality via the life of this poem. What a hopeful romantic!

Because the word “sonnet” means “little song,” it’s not surprising that Maria Passarelli, Delone Catholic High School senior and member of both Hanover Symphony Orchestra and York Youth Symphony Orchestra, should choose the form to render a parody that began in musings about a favorite physics class. Further, that she would pick poetry as her vehicle seems only natural as she “at a fairly young age” tapped away stories at an unused electric typewriter until she discovered rhyming, when her “stories became little rhymes.”

Moreover, Passarelli sophisticated her relationship with poetry, beginning with piano at six and French horn at nine. Says Passarelli, “. . . the more I enjoyed playing and being a part of music, the more I developed an appreciation for poetry. . . . I could recognize the music in poetry and the poetry in music.”

I must insert that Pythagoras sought to discover the mathematical principles of reality through the study of musical harmony and geometry.

Sonnet of the Physics Nerd
(With a Little Help from Shakespeare)

Shall I compare thee to a physics class?
Thou art more stunning than magnetic fields,
Thou art more perfect than Pythagoras,
And still more than the theoretic yield.
A constant’s not so constant as your grace,
No microscope could find a single flaw,
The wisdom I see etched upon your face—
Is matched not, even by Sir Newton’s laws.
While summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
And winds do shake the darling buds of May,
My love for you is at a constant rate,
Accelerating with each passing day,
So long as men can’t count, and eyes can see,
O, calculator, this my love for thee!
- Maria Passarelli

“Poetry is important to have within a community, especially when it is shared among individuals, such as at a poetry reading. . . . because a special bond develops between individuals who can appreciate life on an artistic level, and can connect with others on that same level.”

Thank you, Ms. Passarelli, for connecting us with the past, providing a bit o’ humor, and especially highlighting the intimacy of music and poetry and the value of art’s beginning in imitation and ending eventually in originality.

Land development sometimes supplants farmland. Whether for families or businesses, all is commercial. The price of progress, or the cost of living and sometimes dying? Investing and sacrificing for our collective future. Children choose not to continue farming. Some simply cannot afford it; others go to school for some other reason or to work in another profession or enter military service as a career or marry someone out of state. We each pay and pave our way, one way or another.

Can you tell I’ve been looking for a house to buy since last June? I have combed nearly every neighborhood of the Greater Hanover area. Plus, I’ve learned a heck of a lot about real estate thanks in part to the patience of an exceptional buyer’s agent and to my own stubborn obsession to spend every free moment immersed in all aspects of property hunting. I’ve also witnessed the pluses and minuses of development and over-development.

Most especially, I have gained a deeper appreciation for the land we are fortunate enough to call home. The rolling hills and valleys, the woods and fields, the land! Above all, farmland is predominant in our landscape, even apparent where development has occurred, if you just use your memory. Use your imagination if your memory doesn’t go back so far.

The fusion of two considerations constitutes generational gaps. Legacy. What is handed down from the past. Tradition. A long-established or inherited way of thinking or acting. A continuing pattern of cultural beliefs or practices. It is this latter point that becomes most frustrating because, as one recalls, our brains relish patterns. They never want to willingly give patterns up.

It should be easy to understand why an older generation wants, and even expects, a younger generation to persist in the same pattern of activity. But life has not been that simple for a while.

Our next week’s guest poet columnist, Katy Giebenhain, says, “with all these lovely, hunky barns in Pennsylvania, I thought ‘Replica’ might be fitting” as an introduction.

“It is about a former dairy farmer who finds a job and starts raising his family in a state and town far away from the land he grew up on. He wants to share his past with his children, but can’t and does not realize it. This is a very deep impulse, this desire to pass on the unpassable.”

Replica

From the living room carpet
tractors poke up the ramp
toward the doll-sized hay mow.
This barn’s scars
come from plastic roosters,
toddler’s teeth, weight bearing down
on the plywood spine.
These reflexes are no accident.
The intention is to let
small eyes and thumbs understand
the path things take
when pulled by other things.
Built to scale and AM radio
in a starter-house garage,
three coats of varnish stroked
across a gambrel roof
and he had it done by Christmas.

One tornado-backhand
stilled that barn, that farm’s heart –
raked off its foundation.

To rebuild is not to build again.
To rebuild is to want to build again.
Flip open the doors.
See? Like any ghost, you can run
your hand right through it.
- Katy Giebenhain

I enjoy the ambiguity in the second stanza. Is the “tornado-backhand” the result of the farmer’s frustration? Or, is it the unwitting child who sweeps away the toys before him, playing at being a tornado? Or is it the older child severing his ties with the past, asserting his will to determine his own destiny, refusing the gift or cashing it in? Maybe the child sees no value in becoming a replica of his parents’ past. Maybe he only sees the word “relic” in “replica.”

The poet’s use of sound to knit more tightly her comments on the unraveling of a dream go by nearly unnoticed, they’re so smoothly rendered. Consider at least the assonance (internal vowel sounds) in “barn’s scars,” “weight bearing,” “plywood spine,” “scale and AM radio,” “starter house garage,” “coats of varnish stroked,” and “barn, that farm’s heart.” Talent! Genius!

Giebenhain began writing poetry at the University of Baltimore in the mid-1990’s thanks to her professor, Kendra Kopelke, who is an editor of the journal Passager. She often writes “about the experience of being an expatriate , or ‘subtle foreigner’ in other situations.”

Giebenhain is a Master of Philosophy candidate at University of Glamorgan & Writer’s Inc., London. She lives in Gettysburg with her husband.

Last Saturday, Poetry Brew in York Arts gallery hosted one of the best featured readings by a southeastern PA poet. Afterward, a question loomed like the proverbial elephant in the room: why don’t more poetry aficionados and non-poets attend poetry readings and open mics? It is a question that is palpable at most venues, though seldom addressed, except in private conversations during intermissions or on the drives home. After all, nobody talks publicly about the elephant because nobody knows exactly what to do about it.

Here was a performer, at the top of his craft, delivering impeccably nuanced verse, poem after poem, to a very appreciative audience. Le Hinton’s eloquence was intoxicating, his voice as mesmerizing as any virtuoso’s solo.

I am astonished at the asceticism of olives
the black keys on an otherwise white piano
and how jelly tolerates the infidelity
of peanut butter with bread

I’ve always been a bit slow in appreciating
the finer points of intimacy
the way stuffed animals casually stand
mouths agape while witnessing
the crumpling of dreams in a bedroom

the tightly closed leaves of an artichoke
protect it from the lies of Casanovas
and other insatiable insects

but in the end
most olives lack a beating red center
- Le Hinton

This expert weaver of personification uses common objects and experiences to render his simple aesthetic about human relationships: that without heart, there is no sense of wonder, no looking on the bright side of irony, no tolerance, no forgiveness, no patience, no empathy, no peace. In short, there is no inner strength. There is only the shell or appearance of being complete. The soul needs a heart the way a body craves a soul. For completion.

The poem suggests that the contemplative olive is somehow incomplete, if leaving the body means giving up the heart, the vibrant center of love. In its austerity the olive seems to have shed the seed, i.e., the body and now becomes a soul, the perfect food. But it lacks heart. The soul needs a heart, does it not? Heart and soul go together like so many other couples suggested throughout the poem. Without ebony, what is ivory? Without peanut butter, what is jelly? Without dreams, what is intimacy? Without restraint, what is power? Without heart, where is love? Without love, where is the soul?

All begins with the speaker’s simple observation of the archetypal olive. Archetypes are models that have similar idealized meanings or interpretations among individuals or across cultures. We use archetypes to represent the epitome of some experience or understanding common to humanity which can reveal higher truths about ourselves, good or bad. In an archetype and its derived meaning, we learn about ourselves more intimately in our human relationships.

The olive gains its stature as archetype from Greek mythology, Judeo-Christian tradition, and Islamic symbology. It mostly serves to conjure images of peace, fertility, purity, universality, and veneration. Using the olive as the alpha and omega of the poem emphasizes its significance. Repetition in a poem can lift the poem to a higher realm or cast it into less effective redundancy. Here, the former rings true.

Amidst this commingling of philosophy, symbolism, and the more familiar piano, sandwich, stuffed animals, bedroom, artichoke and insects, an unspoken collective wish rose from Saturday’s crowd. This performance should be experienced by hundreds more people. Maybe thousands.

We felt privileged to be in the presence of a master. Why weren’t many others here to share the pleasure? What limit can be put on witnessing a profession of truth about humanness, especially one that strikes close to home, evoking both laughter or a sudden lump in the throat; one that awakens empathy, coerces you out of your box, paints a shared reality freshly?

Although the room at the gallery was filled, most in attendance were poets. The few non-poets in attendance were supportive friends or spouses.

Is it mostly artists who visit galleries and museums, attend art shows and openings? Do mostly musicians attend concerts and clubs? Do only those who race cars attend NASCAR? Do only politicians attend political debates and vote? Do only people who play a particular sport watch live or broadcast events of that sport? Emotional appeal, entertainment value, and human reflection weave their curious way through answers to these rhetorical questions that all begin with “No.”

But the disparity in attendance between art, music, political, and sports venues and poetry venues is marked. The real choice is not between poetry and concerts, or poetry and sports, or poetry and political rallies. The choice lies somewhere in the domain of value. What do we value? How do we prioritize our values? As humans, time is what we have. So, we prioritize our time. Pleasure is what we are attracted to. Physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual pleasure. Poetry has it all. Maybe it’s time to rearrange priorities. It’s only a small investment of time, but the rewards can be immeasurable!

Okay. I’m in love with the moon. Her hues, the faces she reveals, the tilt of her head, her arches and crescents, her shy newness and her bold fullness. I love that she is reflective, sometimes yellow, and that she is a symbol of imagination, sensibility, and the creative insanity of poets and artists.

Fall always fills me with awe and a twinge. It is my favorite season with a twist.

September temperatures plea for open windows to relish fresh air. Cool nights lend deep rest for our bodies. Grass seems to grow more slowly and mums makes their brilliance known.

Soon, trees that provided us respite from the blistering summer sun will announce their colorful retreat till spring. Autumn is a celebration of preparation and odorous delight. It is putting away our shorts and tees and retrieving sweaters and corduroys.

There is probably not so pleasantly pungent a smell than a walk through autumn woods, nor as pleasing to an evening stroll as the aroma of a wood fire. Sunsets arrive earlier and that certain slant of Dickinsonian light becomes apparent on the drive home.

However beautiful the advent of fall, there lingers beneath the surface of things the hint of impermanence. This idyllic moment of the year will be cut short by a sudden cold rain or a nip of frost on one morning too soon.

And so fall becomes the season of taking stock. Of remembrance and vigilance. Of gathering in and putting up. Of letting go and turning under. Of frenzy and calm.

This summer I began the project of replacing the deck on my house. Knowing I could not possibly execute the round, multi-leveled one I had in mind, I nearly let my perfectionism melt into procrastination once again. To my rescue came a talent to be reckoned with, in the person of Ken Larkin.

One day over coffee and conversation he had me draw a rough idea of what I had in mind. He asked to take my sketch to see what he could do. In two days he came back with a scaled drawing and plan sheets that I could use to apply for a permit.

Since then, Ken, his helper Nick, and occasionally I, worked under Larkin’s astute and precise direction to erect more of a sculpture than a deck. At one point, Ken brought his best friend Samantha Richards over to see his progress.

During our visit, Sam told me about her grandmother’s being a poet and my curiosity was naturally piqued. When she began to recite some of her grandmother’s work, I was hooked.

Sam was gracious enough to loan me her only copy of one of her grandmother’s publications. What delight I found within the pages of her second volume of poems, An Endangered Species: Grandma, verses by Helen Richards!

To show how insightful and mindful of the potency of her poetry Richards was, consider the dedication of her book. “A Gift for/ My unborn great-grandchildren/ as/ Every sunset should have a delicate after-glow.”

From her biographical information on the back cover, we learn that Helen Mitchell Richards was a “poet, parodist, lecturer, and speechwriter” whose work “appeared in the New York Times, Boston and New Hampshire papers, Wellesley College publications, and Best Poems of 1938, Edward O’Brien’s annual selection of outstanding American poetry.”

She was by her own admission strongly influenced by a course she took from Katharine Lee Bates, author of “America the Beautiful,” where Richards also encountered John Masefield, Vachel Lindsay, Amy Lowell, and Gamaliel Bradford.

Here follow three poems of Helen Mitchell Richards, two tributes to September and the last poem in her book, speaking to all who rush to build monuments instead of treasuring memories. What wisdom and sparkle of humor and life! Enjoy!

September Sun for a Golden Wedding

Spring has her lovely, fragile tints
All delicate and new,
But Autumn’s golden richness
Is more glorious in hue–
A subtle, understanding haze
Brings golden moods to Autumn days.

Youth has exquisite ecstasies
And romance neath the moon!
But oh the satisfactions
Of life’s golden afternoon!
A deeper sweeter joy is there
Than Youth and Spring know how to share.

Old ways among these wooded hills,
Old books to read and work to do,
Old friends–old friendships–these the wealth
Of those whose hearts are staunchly true.
Love mellows in a magic way,
To make this day a golden day.

Preserves

Oh don’t be so busy with pickles
And spice,
Putting up, putting down and freezing
What’s nice.
That you don’t preserve
The sun of September!

Like a clear glass of jelly
This hour remember.
A savory essence of heady delight,
Will sharpen the dullness of March’s appetite
A jewel, it will glow you’ll find
In the window of your mind.

In Memoriam

Monuments are not wrought of marble
Nor obelisk of stone,
But of a chance smile
A bar of music
A shared thought
The wish that comes on the first star
The warm human hand
Of sympathy
A metallic flash of wit
Philosophy distilled by living
And Love
Of these we rear the monuments
Of the Heart.

Governor Rendell says he won’t budge on his budgetary position with respect to education. He believes that Pennsylvanians have benefitted by student achievement in test scores and by schools increasing their AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress). ”We’ve come so far, we’ve come so fast,” Rendell said. ”Why would we think for a minute we would stop this progress?” Meanwhile, the state budget is months overdue, and education continues to be a mainstay of contention.

Opponents to Gov. Rendell’s proposal say that PA’s share of stimulus money from the federal government will only require about half of what Rendell is asking for education. They assume that as things recover, more money can be allocated. However, even if that happens, property taxes may have to be raised to make up the difference.

The chief political irritant seems to be the age-old argument over whether more money equates with better educational achievement. Some people still believe that implementing ideology should be free. That once teachers and administrators are in place, and books and schools have been purchased, then education becomes putting to use good ideas. And, ideas don’t cost money, right?

We can “make do” with what we have, and if you’re a good teacher, you should be able to adjust the way you teach to accommodate change in educative trends. What most don’t realize is that additional professional development must occur to ensure success.
Thing is, most training receives very limited resources.

To add to Pennsylvania’s educational woes, public schools alone will benefit. According to the Institute for Public Policy for the PA Catholic Conference, “although funding for public schools is proposed to increase, deep cuts are proposed for the few education budget line items that benefit nonpublic school students. An 11.8% cut is proposed for textbooks, materials and equipment, and services to nonpublic schools.”

Further, while Governor Rendell and our representatives are at a stalemate, which may last until next spring, money is not going to schools to purchase necessities to aid students and teachers in the classroom. And, non-public schools are at a particular disadvantage with their prospects looking even dimmer.

Noam Chomsky, one of the fathers of modern linguistics, states in his “The Responsibility of Intellectuals” that “intellectuals are in a position to expose . . . government . . . their causes and motives and often hidden intentions. In the western world, at least, they have the power that comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression.”

Olivia Harper Wilkins, junior at Delone Catholic High School, writes a poem in response to all the political fallout as she has experienced it. Here, a person who is supposed to be the focus of all budgetary concerns, a student, reveals who gets hurt the most when all sides cannot agree to support our most precious resource and best investment for our collective future.

This Poem Might not be Politically Correct, But Neither is the Governor

It’s been two weeks.
I couldn’t go to camp this summer
because the governor
is cutting back on programs
while wasting more on toys.
When the middle class
will finally be repaid,
the rug is pulled out
from under their feet.
They can’t reap
the once available benefits
that would enrich the future
of the state
while the policemen
get a new playground
hidden
in the middle of nowhere.

It’s been five weeks.
I’m sitting in the lecture hall
listening to the speaker
as he explains the correlation
between the free enterprise system
and the government
and how small businesses
would suffer
from tax increases
and new healthcare policies.
They are safe for now
because the budget
is still unsettled.
If I were five weeks late
to hand in a report,
I’d be failing high school.
It’s unconstitutional.
I’d be in jail.
Yet he is above the law,
choosing his own paycheck
and deadlines
and only helping
himself in Philadelphia.

It’s been seven weeks.
The books haven’t come in
so I can’t embrace things
like vocabulary
and Spanish
because my school
doesn’t have
enough money
to purchase new textbooks
with their own savings.
Only 600 or so people
rely on the administration
and they still have their budget
established on time.
Over 12 million people
rely on the state government;
however, they can’t settle
their disputes
by the deadline.
Put them in jail,
give them an “F”.
Used car salesmen should not be governors.

Critique starts up Sept. 21 at The Reader’s Café, 7:30-9:30. Fourth Monday series kicks off on Sept. 28, 7:30, with Marilyn Tenenoff from Harrisburg.

We continue to have a national conversation about using a wall or a fence along our southern border. We insist it is for protection, but maybe it’s really an insistence on privacy.


Privacy. The state of being free from intrusion or disturbance in one’s private life or affairs. Secretive. Not open for discussion. Closed. Limited in membership and not readily expanded to include new items. Exclusive. A deterrent to sociality. An affront against our social nature or tendency to assemble in community.

We were never meant to remain alone in this world. “No man is an island, entire of itself . . .” Our very existence depends on being open and social. Yet, we have a tendency to erect barriers around ourselves as individuals and families and countries. Is it for protection or seclusion? In either case, a wall seems to say we have lost our ability to trust. That we fear something. And, trust is the foundation of building relationships. Fear is the first step to intolerance, desperation, and, eventually, violence.

Without relationship, life is less, not more. Wanting to climb over, tunnel under, or tear down a wall is only natural. Whether the wall is physical, emotional, spiritual, or psychological, it is a barrier to communication and progress. 


It should be no wonder then that a poem assigned to me to read as a tribute to local, vibrant poet Doris Doud last night at York Arts Poetry Brew struck a peculiar chord.

WALL

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall
That wants it down.” – Robert Frost

Each stone upon another stone
was dragged and lifted into place
by people now gone back to bone
beneath the earth without a trace.

The wall now pitches forward from
the weight of those gone down inside,
another grave, another tomb,
and displaced earth begins to slide.

As though these prisoners of soil
work to see the walls brought low
and as they rest, so too they toil
beneath each stately solemn row.

Their effort even greater now
than what it was while they drew breath
stone by stone they excavate
’til not a standing wall is left. 
 

- Doris Doud

First, the familiar epigraph. An epigraph is a quotation at the beginning of a literary composition, setting forth a theme. Anyone who knows Frost, and many who don’t, know these lines. The comment upon human behavior seems to involve the removal of barriers, which implicitly and ironically, has been insisted upon in the first place.

Knowing that Doud frequently takes the commonplace in our experience and expands its importance to the point of profundity, I knew that “Wall” would entail a meditation that carries its audience beyond the obvious that is implied in the epigraph. Indeed, I was not disappointed. “Wall” has its very builders be the veritable destroyers.

Frost indicates that maybe some ethereal volition is acting in conjunction with gravity and time to loosen the hold of a wall in its role of protection or privacy. Frost questions, inferentially, the roles of protection and privacy. Maybe these two highly touted and seemingly virtuous attributes are really stumbling blocks. Protection is really a guise for giving up hope in negotiation or compromise or diplomacy. Privacy is being self-centered, secretive, inhibited, even paranoid. Trust and openness are sacrificed in erecting a wall.

In Doud’s poem the dead realize that the lives they wasted pursuing security and isolation kept them from focusing on what existed before walls had been erected: candor, honesty, interdependency, faith fellow human beings, cooperation, and sacrifice. The dead in her poem spend time toiling to undo the mistakes of their lives, one stone at a time. They desire to level the playing field for all. They remind the living that building walls, even walls of indifference, cannot stand. Walls cannot bear it out to the end of time, so why not hasten their destruction, or their de-construction, if you will.

Beyond Doud’s message is that her poem is metrically sound. The cadence of her iambic rhythm in “Wall,” of an unstressed poetic syllable followed by a stressed syllable, not only matches the natural cadence of our speech pattern but also imitates the methodical picking up and laying down of stone. The pattern is intentionally broken in the next to last line where trochaic meter, a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one (the opposite of iambs), draws attention to the line. Why?

Consider. “Stone by stone they excavate” is the central line in the poem because it points up what should be the true focus of the living, the dissolution of walls, provided by the example of those under the ground, our forbearers.

Please send comments, poems, and ideas to michaeljhoover@gmail.com. Columns are archived at eveningsun.com/poetrycolumn. Catch First Friday Poetry March 7 at The Ragged Edge Coffee House hosted by Dana Larkin Sauers. Marilyn Tenenoff features. Downstairs at The Finer edge, enjoy opening of art show curated by Adrian Sauers. The vibe is electrifying.